Computing – Page 24

Walt Mosspuppet’s hands-on with a certain tablet computer you may have heard about.

January 26, 2010 Danny X 0 comment

As has become the norm on Applemas Eve, speculation and rumours have reached a fever pitch leading up to tomorrow’s Apple event at which the company’s tablet device is rumoured to be unveiled to a wide (and, likely, teary)-eyed world. The blogging, speculation, and mock-ups have been pouring in from bloggers and “insiders who prefer to remain nameless”, the king of whom is, by all accounts, Wall Street Journal tech expert Walt Mossberg. Moossberg’s Apple fandom has been referenced countless times before, often in reference to his habit of adding…

Episode 22: IPTV

January 25, 2010January 25, 2010 Doug Groves ASRock, Asus, Bayonetta, Book Of Eli, Boxee0 comment

Want to do away with your cable bill? Ryan does, so we take a look at different options, from low cost media players like the Asus O!Play Air, all the way up to HTPC setups using nettops like the ASRock ION 330 or Acer Aspire Revo. We’ve also got reviews of Book of Eli and Bayonetta on tap.

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 available now

January 22, 2010January 22, 2010 Doug Groves download, Firefox, Mozilla, update1 Comment

If you use Firefox, and haven’t yet got the update notification, verison 3.6 of the Mozilla Foundation’s popular web browser has been unleashed for Windows, Mac and Linux users. Although freshly minted, in my limited testing it does seem snappier than earlier versions, though with my standard 15 tabs open, memory usage hardly seems addressed. From the Firefox blog: Below are some of the coolest features of Firefox 3.6: Personas: Personalize the look of your Firefox by selecting new themes called Personas in a single click and without a restart…

Transformers: War for Cybertron is the Transformers video game you might actually WANT to play

January 21, 2010January 21, 2010 Danny X PC games, PS3, Transformers, Xbox 3603 Comments

Not since Hot Rod opened up the Matrix of leadership to the haunting tune of “You Got the Touch” have I been so moved by anything Transformers related. It’s not because I’m some kind of callow emotionless jerk-bot. It’s because anything transformers-related since 1986 has, um, sucked. But the Transformers: War for Cybertron game trailer looks like it wants to buck that trend. Featuring the voice of Peter Cullen and some cameo appearances by what appears to be Omega Supreme, the trailer appears to ramp up the battle scenes in…

Bing to potentially replace Google as the iPhone’s search engine of choice

January 20, 2010January 20, 2010 Danny X Apple, bing, google, iPhone, tablet3 Comments

According to an article in Business Week, Apple and Microsoft have been making plans to bring The Find Engine to the iPhone, replacing Google as the search engine of choice on the rapidly aging Apple device. This move would exacerbate the already touchy relationship between Apple and Google, and would more distinctly define the two companies as direct competitors to one another in the wake of the release of the Nexus One, Google’s own high-profile smartphone. That said, it is unclear whether the decision to change default search engines is…

Wacom Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch Tablet: A re-review

January 19, 2010February 16, 2010 Danny X input, review, tablet, Wacom33 Comments

Back in November, Dave was able to satisfy his desire need to be able to multi-touch everything by plunking down $230 on the Wacom Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch tablet. He was kind enough to review it for us, and his reactions were decidedly favourable; so much so that Doug was convinced enough to pull the trigger on one of his own, the diminutive Pen & Touch, which he too spoke highly of. Personally, I’m an Intuos man; my first foray into the Wacom world was on an Intuos 2,…

Asus O!Play Air Review

January 17, 2010April 13, 2010 kingpinlei 802.11n, Asus, eSATA, HD, HFS+ compatible, High Definition, Mac, media player, O!Play Air, PC, review, set top box, USB, WiFi, Windows40 Comments

(Editor’s note: With newer firmware available Dave has taken another look at the functionality of the O!Play. You can catch the newness that is the update here…) I’ve been checking out HD media players lately; mainly because I’m not sold on the future of content being in the form of physical media. Sony’s Blu-Ray may have won the optical media war, but for an increasing number of people – not just us tech nerds like myself – shiny plastic discs are so last decade as digital distribution takes centre stage. …

Boxee Beta now public

January 8, 2010January 15, 2010 Doug Groves Boxee, Boxee Box, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Windows Media Center5 Comments

As we’ve mentioned before, Boxee threw it’s hat into the settop box ring, and from the looks of what they’ve got on tap, it’s one of the better options. The announced Boxee Box hardware (made by DLink) will have HDMI out, and support 1080p video to your television, using the horsepower of Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chipset, and support a myriad of file formats, networked content and streams from online sources. The cut off cube look is just begging for a “Weighted Companion Cube” mod, and is actually small enough that…

Bumptop appears on new HP TouchSmart convertible

January 6, 2010 Doug Groves bumptop, convertible, HP, tablet1 Comment

The Consumer Electronics Show is gearing up in Las Vegas, and with it comes literally thousands of new product announcements. There’s nothing better in January than looking at the geek toys you’ll be wanting NEXT Christmas. One of the announcements that caught my eye is HP’s TouchSmart tm2. The specs themselves are pretty solid. Windows 7 with a Core 2 Duo, ATI graphics in a fairly thin (but not truly slim) 12.1″ touchscreen which works with both fingers and stylus, and an expected 9 hours of battery life all for…

Nexus One is the HTC Passion, Wind compatible, $530 unlocked, coming in January

December 30, 2009December 30, 2009 drsquid cellphone, google, HTC, Nexus One, Wind Mobile, Wireless1 Comment

Today documents and screenshots leaked out to Gizmodo and Engadget showing some Google pages, and HTC training materials, for the Nexus One Google phone. The HTC documents are also clearly labelled as for the HTC Passion, so these phones are one and the same. The HTC documents show that the Passion is HTC internal name for the Nexus One, but it is not clear whether HTC will sell it as the Passion in other markets outside North America. The leaked Nexus One images and videos showed the phone running ‘stock’…

OnLive demoed at Columbia University, looks promising

December 29, 2009 drsquid cloud computing, Compression, console, Gaming, OnLive, PC, video7 Comments

Gamertag Radio recently posted a 48 minute demonstration of OnLive, the cloud gaming platform that many claim is just smoke and mirrors, recorded at a lecture at Columbia University. While final judgement should withheld until the service actually launches – and someone outside the company has tested it in the ‘real’ world, this video goes a long way to proving to me that there is real technology here that will work, and could potentially revolutionize gaming as we know it. However I am not ready to give up local gaming…

Mozilla exec recommends Bing for search

December 11, 2009December 11, 2009 Doug Groves Aza Dotzler, bing, Eric Schmidt, google, Microsoft, Mozilla, privacy, search4 Comments

Asa Dotzler, Mozilla’s director of community development watched Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt talk about privacy concerns in a CNBC interview, and was compelled to respond with recommending Microsoft’s Bing as the search engine of choice for Mozilla’s Firefox. This is what Schmidt said… “I think judgment matters… If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines — including Google — do retain this information…